1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to interactive computer based manufacturing control systems, and more particularly to a system for integrating changes and customer feedback responses into the manufacturing process.
2. Description of Related Art
Customer preference and satisfaction are typically measured in the early planning stages of a product development cycle. In recent years quality function deployment (QFD) techniques have been used to integrate customer wants and perceptions, product characteristic and technical interaction of product characteristic into the product planning process. QFD concepts are described in the article "The House of Quality," Harvard Business Review by Hauser et al, May/June, 1988, pages 63-7, hereby incorporated by reference.
QFD techniques include the use of interrelated tables which map relationships between customer data and product characteristics. Such an approach helps to establish manufacturing targets for performance, that results in a static description used only in early design efforts. Other techniques such as control charts have been used for ongoing or real time control of a manufacturing process. QFD has been used primarily as a manual design tool although entry and manipulation and display of the data has been automated, as for example by the software offerings QFD Plus and QFD/capture. These products are commercially available and do much to simplify the drudgery of entering the data comprising the House of Quality used with much success as a planning tool.
Similarly, as described by Cohen in the article "Quality Function Deployment: an Application Prospective" from Digital Equipment Corporation, National Productivity Review, summer 1988, pages 197-208, the use of an electronic spread sheet is described for managing the vast amount of data necessary to affect QFD use. While great success has been described in the literature regarding the use of QFD principles and manufacturing, a continuing aspect worthy of mention is the personnel resources necessary to effectively use QFD due to the amount of training required to fully utilize vast amount of data.
The use of expert systems to other applications involving artificial intelligence are becoming more prevalent. There are many examples of knowledge base systems in use. U.S. Pat. No. 4,884,218 to Agnew et al describes an expert system for determining machine configurations. U.S. Pat. No. 4,866,634 to Rebow et al discloses an expert system shell for using computing functions of variables and response to numeric and symbolic data values input by the user. U.S. Pat. No. 4,775,935 to Yourick discloses a multimode video merchandiser system for selecting, based on user preferences, a sequence in which images of products stored in a video disk are presented on a monitor to a user. U.S. Pat. No. 4,648,044 discloses a basic expert system tool for building a knowledge system and running a consultation on a computer.
It is therefore apparent that there is a need for refining techniques for manipulating and displaying vast unwieldy amounts of data associated with QFD activity. Because so much data is generated in building a House of Quality, the data is susceptible to use in a knowledge based expert system. A means of combining or using in tandem the advantageous features of an expert system and QFD is desirable to minimize the time for decision making based on product knowledge and facts. Further, a need exists to dynamically link the QFD customer and product data with the actual production data such that a process tool that allows production data to be manipulated based upon customer needs and product properties is created.